Why shmups are such a niche genre

[Lucas]

Cinematic games are okay, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, and ideally if the cutscenes can be skipped at the press of a single button.

I know you're talking about shooters in particular, so this might seem slightly off-focus, but I disagree that games designers have an obligation to nicely label genre or anything else. For marketing purposes, I'm sure they can't avoid it, but from an artistic and gameplay perspective, there's no need. They can and ought to do whatever works best for the game. Cutscenes can be interactive, after all; there's different ways of getting "story" into games that don't involve static screens (many games use "filmic lite" methods of story pacing, i.e. boos rushes past screen, appears later, that kind of thing). I think for many shooters it's important to have cool-down / rest periods though.

I agree with you here, and kinda wish some of the themes in certain shmups (ESP Ra.De) were fleshed out and explored a bit more somehow.

Personally, the place where many shmups fail in the "quick action" department, is jumping back in after your credit. The traditional countdown, then game over screen, then switch to title, then credits (if arcade), then picking your fighter, then finally back in.

Its real easy to bash a (potential) cutscene, but that ending area is what kills me. Dangun Feveron makes you wait like 3 seconds before you can rush the countdown. Gah.

[gs68]

Made a post in a shmup thread on another forum asking what turns people off from the shooting game genre. I'd like to get some input from people who aren't a part of this niche.

(I'd invite them to this thread but inviting people from one forum to another in general seems like a bad idea.)

[Taylor]

That is very cursory, and I understood that it did that when I first played. However, I had to come here to find out: (Stuff)

Right, but my point was to play Progear you don't need to know, for example, what the lovely bar at the end of each stage means. Everything required to play Progear is told to you either through the inputs you have or the few pictures showing off the ring/gem system (which itself isn't needed until around halfway through stage 3).

I don't agree that you have have to tell the player absolutely everything. The ideology of Portal is of questionable relevance because it is, if anything, the complete polar opposite of an arcade shmup. First and foremost there are time restraints and there obviously isn’t enough time to cram all that stuff in at the start of a Progear session in a way that makes arcade owners happy. Of course you could be very clever with your opening stages to drop this stuff in but, more importantly, explaining everything in detail and plotting out an ideal score route would make the game less fun. By holding this stuff back you lean towards experimentation and iteration, something obviously beneficial for a game only 20-45 minutes long, and you also give a reason for people to watch and talk to each other in the arcade environment (especially while waiting in the queue).

In fact I played Progear in Hey! in Akiba and shared a rather wonderful/confusing moment with a guy I met there. My Japanese isn’t strong enough to discuss the finer points of a shmup (it’s only just about strong enough to ask where the restroom is), so we just took turns with him gradually copying my score route on the first stage. Take that language barrier. And DFK had just come out and pretty much every cabinet had about 5 people watching taking mental notes. You wouldn't get any of this if everything was a clear no-brainer.

Made a post in a shmup thread on another forum asking what turns people off from the shooting game genre. I'd like to get some input from people who aren't a part of this niche.

(I'd invite them to this thread but inviting people from one forum to another in general seems like a bad idea.)

The difficulty smoke and mirrors is bar far the biggest turn off.

[Lucas]

That is very cursory, and I understood that it did that when I first played. However, I had to come here to find out: (Stuff)

Right, but my point was to play Progear you don't need to know, for example, what the lovely bar at the end of each stage means. Everything required to play Progear is told to you either through the inputs you have or the few pictures showing off the ring/gem system (which itself isn't needed until around halfway through stage 3).

I don't agree that you have have to tell the player absolutely everything. The ideology of Portal is of questionable relevance because it is, if anything, the complete polar opposite of an arcade shmup. First and foremost there are time restraints and there obviously isn’t enough time to cram all that stuff in at the start of a Progear session in a way that makes arcade owners happy. Of course you could be very clever with your opening stages to drop this stuff in but, more importantly, explaining everything in detail and plotting out an ideal score route would make the game less fun. By holding this stuff back you lean towards experimentation and iteration, something obviously beneficial for a game only 20-45 minutes long, and you also give a reason for people to watch and talk to each other in the arcade environment (especially while waiting in the queue).

I don't really disagree with you.

The thing is, the question of the thread was why shmups are such a niche genre, and the issues I brought up are most definitely some of the reasons.

For the most part shmups drop you into the shitstorm without so much of an explanation. If you want explanation, you need to go outside of the game. Outside of the world. Maybe to the manual, maybe to here. And some people like that, but it niches the game down to those people. Not a bad thing per se, but thats what happens.

Not only that but because you have the option to continue with credits, many will. They dont KNOW that your score gets reset, and if they do, they dont KNOW that 1CCing it is the "real" way to play. The nature of the arcade is sending mixed signals to people not in the scene.

And Yes I do need to know what the bars at the end are for, because why would I want to play a game with totally ambiguous goals, then get rated on my performance of god knows what? More mixed signals. If they put that in arbitrarily, and it serves no purpose...thats bad design.

The reason I bring up Portal is because in the Making Of commentary, they said they didnt give the gun to you right away because it confused the hell out of people. They had to define a portal, and what it could do, before you could use it to your advantage and solve puzzles.

[gs68]

So far,

As far as genres go it's a bit of a one-trick pony. You can add danmaku, you can add ship customization, you can add polarity mechanics, but it's still the same gameplay at the end.

So perhaps lack of variety? I could kinda understand why; shmups are like wine. An inexperienced person will think they're all the same.

[BIL]

You can say much the same about any genre, when you're being that shallow.

[gs68]

True, though shmups get more heat than other genres due to what some perceive as "outdated" gameplay.

[CptRansom]

An inexperienced person will think they're all the same.

I get this a lot. I was playing Mars Matrix during lunch when a student came back early and said, "Oh cool, this is like Galaga, right?" (he was serious) When I asked him to explain, he said, "Well, all you're doing is moving and shooting and that's all you do in Galaga."

"Oh, so Halo's just like Call of Duty, right?"
"No way, they're nothing alike."
"But all you do is run around and shoot things and pick up different guns."
"No, there's so much more than... okay, Ransom, I see your point."
Then I took a minute and explained about trying for a 1cc, playing for score, and how the scoring works in MM (my favorite comment was "Oh you can reflect bullets? Wouldn't that make the game super-easy?" ).

You can take many activities and distill them like that. Basketball? Oh, that's just like soccer/football with your hands, right? You just run up and down the field and try to score a goal. Playing the piano? Simple! Just hit the keys that match the notes. FPS? Run around and shoot shit. Fighting games? Wiggle the joystick and hit buttons. Mario games? Run right.

Congratulations! Everything is simple forever!

[Vyxx]

Mario games?

Hold right, jump when needed.

[CptRansom]

Hold right, jump when needed.

I was wondering why I couldn't beat the first stage.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I think nearlly everyone of us is or has been in the past biased in the way they choose game they like. I remember as a kid i had a megadrive which been poor I rented my games and only had new games bought on special occations.

Anyway my point is that i was very biased in the games i picked to play, which were genrally the most hyped games by the publishers and the gaming media, most other games i would usually quickly pass over as "those crappy games" just by looking at the box art and the usually too small to make anything out screen shots on the back.

Things got even worse when i moved onto the ps1 which i had a hell of allot more games bought for me as I again only paid any heed to the hyped games like tomb raider, tekken, ff7, grand tourismo and totally ignored the type of games that i nowadays think of as classics and fun games to play.

I only wish i had the same tastes and maturity in gaming back then as i do now as theres a vast amount of great games i missed out on. I expect that many kids today that are the same as i was but one thing they have that i didnt have as a kid is their PCs and the net sop they can find out that theres allot more fun games worth playing then whats the current next blockbuster game with all the hype that surrounds them.

[Exarion]

I too have attempted to ask this question on mainstream forums, and I received very different responses from what gs68 found (massive quotefarm incoming):

They died because they were too hard and lost popularity, which is a shame, hardly any new ones come out.

They took skill too.

A few still come out in Japan, such as DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu, which came out earlier this year. However, the number of commercial releases each year is still in the single digits.

Yep, a few, it shouldn't be like that, there should be more coming out.

they have been replaced with fps and 3rd person shooters. just like most other 2d games, they're genres have been ugraded to 3d and the actual gameplay has evolved quite a bit

They have not been replaced by a 3d version of itself. While both are called shooters, an FPS is not a 3d version of a shmup, they are 2 very different genres with nothing in common except name. It's not the same relation as a 2D fighter to a 3D fighter.

I remember a time when finishing a game was really an achivement, now I get achivements for finishing the training mission.

You have to remember gamers use to have skills back in the day. Now if the game is even a little hard most gamers today cry and turn it back in to gamestop. If they can find a cheat or game save or faq or mag or video. I remember when getting to the end of games ment skills and just by knowing the game ending was proof of said skill.

There was no game shark or book or video or game saves either just good old fashioned hand eye and memory.

nostalgia is a funny thing, play some of the older games and likely you'll realize that your skills have improved over the years and it might take you a few ours to complete. Or the game mechanics are designed around taking your coins but not really giving a real challange, just cheap.

Ill help dig the grave if it means they will jump in faster.

I wish there were more run n guns...

why do most shmups have people instead of vehicles flying?

I remember the days of R-Type, Gradius, Zero Wing, Raiden, Blasing Lasers, Psychosis, and so many others. There was this one I remember from TG16, instead of ships, you were a dragon shooting different fireball weapons, and really creative powerups like transforming your dragon into a 2headed and then 3 headed creature.

But R-type was always my favorite

(can anyone ID the game described?)

Raiden, now that's a game I haven't heard mention of in a long time. I had Raiden Project i think it was called on the PSX when I was little. That was my ****. Love shooters like that.

So some people actually do want to see more of these games, while others want them to just go die. Maybe a good introduction would be to take a scoring system from today and combine it with the style of R-type, Gradius, etc. It would be what people expect in terms of survival, but give them something new when scoring. Also, make the game stop at the halfway point if the player has continued before then, and then tell them that they need to get there on one credit to continue, and give them a bad ending if they score poorly, and then explicitly tell them to try for a better score.

[Kollision]

I remember the days of R-Type, Gradius, Zero Wing, Raiden, Blasing Lasers, Psychosis, and so many others. There was this one I remember from TG16, instead of ships, you were a dragon shooting different fireball weapons, and really creative powerups like transforming your dragon into a 2headed and then 3 headed creature.

But R-type was always my favorite

(can anyone ID the game described?)

Dragon Spirit?

[BIL]

Either that or Dragon Saber.

[Exarion]

DeathSmiles prview, though a bit old, looks promising. It looks like there are two reviewers who are confirmed to like the game, hopefully we'll find more.

[drunkninja24]

After playing a bit of Soldner-X 2, I have to say I like the direction it took with it's tutorial system. I think if other shmups were to implement something like this, it might go a long way in acclimating people to know just what they're supposed to be doing and how the mechanics of the game work. I know that's been a complaint from some that I know, and it's a valid one IMO. There's absolutely no reason that people should be forced to have to dig around and find information on how exactly scoring, rank, etc. work in a particular game.

[NR777]

Soldner X-2 is a great "gateway drug" game. Not very difficult (haven't got all the keys yet, but a no-miss run up until stage 6 is easy) but I like how it handles scoring: you may 1cc the game, but it severely punishes sloppy play when it comes to scoring.

[drunkninja24]

Found this presentation on shmups from UC Santa Cruz:

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps080 ... shmups.pdf

[Ravid]

Found this presentation on shmups from UC Santa Cruz:

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps080 ... shmups.pdf

Shmup as a way to explore meaning of music, literature?

What the flying fuck.

[linko9]

Wow, that class seems like it would suck. The prof seems to think that in order to make shmups better you need to get more involved storytelling...

[Exarion]

Improved choreography
View game as a form of dance

Synchronizing movements of player and enemies to achieve aesthetic effect

We already have this, it's called Touhou. He mentions Shoot the Bullet but none of the other games in the series.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Espgaluda II (for the iPhone) review on Eurogamer.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

coming from a mainstream site thats a very good review but i bet allot of it is down to all the hassle the rev stuart cambell has been giving them which if you go to the game info page where theres mistakingly put up a picture of futari (lol) with thye words Caving In.

[soloista]

Found this presentation on shmups from UC Santa Cruz:

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps080 ... shmups.pdf

1. Does he want narrative in a game to closely follow the way movies do?

2. He moves far too quickly on the arcade influence on shmups.

3. "Games as Art" gives me the sense that he really likes Ikaruga and Rez as shmup role models.

4. His recommendations for the direction of shmups is tied heavily into the "games as art" approach and a narrative-dictated (which would be different from narrative-driven) trend of games these days.

5. "reinterpret existing media" and "exploring the meaning of music and literature" sound like a prepackaged academic statement.

[Dragoforce]

Don't forget that it's only the notes from the lecture. You can't really criticize the teacher based on the contents of those notes.

[Wenchang]

Found this presentation on shmups from UC Santa Cruz:

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps080 ... shmups.pdf

You can listen to the audio version of that here: http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/3135108

[gs68]

Hey mainstream: There are danmaku shooters that aren't Ikaruga.

[Ed Oscuro]

So far,

As far as genres go it's a bit of a one-trick pony. You can add danmaku, you can add ship customization, you can add polarity mechanics, but it's still the same gameplay at the end.

So perhaps lack of variety? I could kinda understand why; shmups are like wine. An inexperienced person will think they're all the same.

I like it (ahem) when "top-tier" games

Everybody loves on Clive Barker's Undying...appropriately enough since it's got a lot of amazing points. But cohesive gameplay isn't one of them. It basically changes genres from a rather clumsy sixgun shooter to something like playing Rune (from what I know about that one) or Hexen with just one weapon (the fighter's fists at that). When you play that game, and most FPSes for that matter, for maximum effectiveness, there's little variety. And this all on the weapon system; the essentials of movement, cover, and aim don't really change from Shadow Warrior to Call of Duty MW2.

Sometimes consistency is best. All the time I've spent playing FPSes in the last half year I didn't feel as alive as I did in the few minutes earlier today when I was screwing around with Nitro Ball and especially Mystic Riders (the caves in the second stage with all the bullets flying all over, and you throw around the scepter - oh yeah!)

Hold right, jump when needed.

I was wondering why I couldn't beat the first stage.

Recently I was reading somebody said that as a kid they didn't know to jump so they...kept "clumsily murdering Mario with the same pit" (Seanbaby quote ahoy). I think they were like 4 though.

[CptRansom]

Recently I was reading somebody said that as a kid they didn't know to jump so they...kept "clumsily murdering Mario with the same pit" (Seanbaby quote ahoy). I think they were like 4 though.

It was definitely sarcasm on my part. I would certainly hope that with a whopping two buttons, even a four year old could figure out how to jump. =/

[Ed Oscuro]

Recently I was reading somebody said that as a kid they didn't know to jump so they...kept "clumsily murdering Mario with the same pit" (Seanbaby quote ahoy). I think they were like 4 though.

It was definitely sarcasm on my part. I would certainly hope that with a whopping two buttons, even a four year old could figure out how to jump. =/

This was from Digital Press Forums, where any degradation of faith in humanity is possible! Anyway, you said it, not me

I still have trouble with the Mario inertia so I don't throw any stones when it comes to that game.